The field of the invention relates generally to maintaining search and inspection requirements for operation of individual aircraft, and more specifically, to methods and systems for sensing activity using energy harvesting devices.
Many airline procedures are in place to ensure the safety of passengers, crew and equipment. In one instance, a visual inspection process of an airline interior, for example, may include visually looking for opened doors, visually looking for broken tamper evident tapes, and/or manually opening the various doors, panels, and covers generally found within a passenger airliner cabin. The process is conducted to visually inspect the spaces, or volumes, behind these devices, whether or not the doors, panels, and covers have been accessed.
Visually inspecting these spaces and volumes is labor intensive and the process results in an incurred expense for the airline operator. The process may also result in an extended airport gate turn around time. The reality, however, is the vast majority of these spaces have not been accessed or otherwise tampered with. Therefore, the vast majority of visual inspections are not value added.
Airplanes undergo a fairly rigorous inspection in the morning hours preceding the first flight of the day and further inspections are performed while cleaning the airplane between flights resulting in several man-hours per airplane per day. If any areas appear to be tampered with, a more thorough inspection will then be performed.